Iran Press/ America: "By the middle of February, we expect half a million deaths in this country," Rochelle Walensky said on Sunday.
"That doesn't speak to the tens of thousands of people who are living with a yet uncharacterized syndrome after they've recovered," Walensky told CBS' "Face the Nation".
Walensky was chief of infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital before President-elect Joe Biden picked her to lead the CDC.
Some people who have had Covid-19 have suffered symptoms months after testing positive.
"And we still yet haven't seen the ramifications of what happened from the holiday travel, from holiday gathering, in terms of high rates of hospitalizations and the deaths thereafter," Walensky said. "I think we still have some dark weeks ahead."
The CDC published a composite forecast last week projecting a total of 440,000 to 477,000 Covid-19 deaths in the US by February 6.
A recent coronavirus projection from the University of Washington estimates more than 566,000 deaths by May 1 in the US.
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